~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Albion's Seed Notes
Albion’s Seed Notes from: Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer
East Anglia to Massachusetts: The Exodus of the English Puritans, 1629-1641
The Great Migration
Many cultural stereotypes attached to the people of eastern England. East Anglian historian R. W. Ketton Cremer writes, “The Norfolk man, gentle or simple, tended to be dour, stubborn, fond of argument and litigation, strongly Puritan in his religious views. The type was far from universal ...but it was a type to which the majority of all classes to some degree conformed.” These images added yet another dimension to regional identity in the seventeenth century.
Speech Ways: Yankee Twang and Norfolk Whine. Yankee accent was exceptionally harsh and highpitched. New Englanders omitted h after w, so that whale became wale and added an extra e before ou, so that now became a nasal neow. Glare became glar; have became hev; yesterday became yistidy; general became ginral; drown became drownd; America became Americur. Yankee speech owed much of its distinctive character to its pronunciation of the letter r. Postvocalic r’s tended to disappear altogether, so that Harvard became Haav’d (with the a pronounced as in happen). This speech habit came from East Anglia and may still be heard in the English counties of Suffolk, Norfolk and Kent.
In Boston the dialect was spoken so rapidly as to make it incomprehensible to even other residents of New England, frequently contracting two short syllables into one. Thus, Sweden, Britain, garden and vessel are pronounced Swed’n, Brit’n, gard’n and vess’l.
Building Ways: Buildings in New England have been made of wood for nearly 4 centuries, more so than in any other region. This is a custom carried from the east of England where timberframed houses, in post and beam construction, are more common than elsewhere in Britain. Wood was also plentiful in New England.
Marriage Ways: The Puritan idea of marriage as a contract. Age at marriage: Men tended to marry at age 26 and women at age 23, a pattern that persisted for a century. Nearly everyone married: 94% of women and 98% of men. The Puritans rejected Anglican ideas of marriage it was not a religious ceremony, but a civil contract. They agreed that this contract must be “agreed” or “executed,” but not “performed” or “solemnized” before a magistrate, not a minister. Customs of courtship were carefully designed to allow young people privacy enough to discover if they loved one another, while at the same time that parents maintained close supervision. Bundling: a courting couple were put to bed together, with a bundling board between them, and sometimes the young woman’s legs were bound together in a “bundling stocking” which fitted her body like a glove. Courting stick: a hollow pole 6 or 8 feet long, with an earpiece at one end and a mouthpiece at the other. The courting couple whispered quietly to one another through this tube, while members of the family remained in the room nearby. Betrothed couples were required to post their “banns” (a public announcement) at the meeting house on at least 3 lecture days. The wedding was commonly arranged for a date in November, which was the favourite season in Puritan New England. The wedding was performed at home by a magistrate in a simple civil ceremony there were no holy vows or wedding rings because the Puritans disapproved of these things. A modest wedding dinner followed the sober settlers of Massachusetts did not approve of wild wedding parties.
Childrearing Ways: Breaking of Will. Childrearing customs were shaped by Puritan ideas and East Anglian experiences. Behind these practices lay an explicit assumption, deeply rooted in Calvinist theology, about the natural depravity of the newborn child. The dual idea of the depravity of infants and the perversity of their natural will led Puritans to the conclusion that the first and most urgent purpose of child rearing was that they called the “breaking of the will”. This was a determined effort to destroy a spirit of autonomy in a small child. Willbreaking was mainly a form of mental discipline, but when all else failed, New England parents did not hesitate to use physical constraints. Restless children were rolled into small, squirming balls with their knees tied firmly beneath their chins, and booted back and forth across the floor by their elders. Other youngsters were dangled by their heels out of windows, or forced to kneel on sharp sticks, or made to sit precariously for long periods on a one-legged stool, or compelled to wear a painful cleft stick on the tip of the nose. Large children were caned or whipped; tiny infants were tapped sharply on the skull with hard ceramic thimbles. Another common punishment was a wooden bit called the whispering stick, firmly set between the teeth and fastened by a cord behind the neck. To the front was added a shamepaper that read, “he whispers”.
Food Ways: The Puritans associated plain cooking with piety and vegetables with virtue. They created one of the more austere food ways in the Western world. For 3 centuries, New England families gave thanks to their Calvinist God for cold baked beans and stale brown bread, An important staple of this diet was “pease porridge”. Peas were boiled or baked, eaten hot or cold 3 times a day. Another staple was rough brown bread, which after the 1660s was made with rye flour and cornmeal. Wheat flour was reserved for special occasions and ornamental uses such as the top layer of pies hence the New England folk expression “upper crust”. Another favourite dish was the New England boiled dinner: meat and vegetables submerged in plain water and boiled relentlessly without seasonings of any kind. The common table beverage in MA was dark English beer during the 17th century and fermented apple cider during the 18th. Shellfish was regarded with suspicion. The East Anglian taste for baking became an important part of culinary customs in New England. Brick ovens were among the first structures built in Massachusetts.
Dress Ways: Simple clothes and “sadd” colours. With few exceptions, Puritans avoided wearing the colour black it was not plain enough for their tastes. Especially favoured was russet, and a color called philly mort from the French feuille morte (dead leaf). The outfit did include the legendary black felt steeple hat. To discourage excessive display, the Bay Colony passed strict laws that forbade men and women of every rank from wearing “new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature”. Also forbidden were “slashed clothes,” silver, gold, silk laces, girdles, and hatbands. The court decreed that “no garment shall be made with short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered.” They also had an intense hostility to wigs. Cosmetic aids of every kind were condemned not merely as extravagance but as an act of blasphemy. Washing was uncommon. There were no baths in the town of Quincy for 200 years Much use was made of scented powders and leaves.
Sports and games: Sports on Sunday were rigorously punished. The Puritans especially disliked games associated with gambling and drinking; cards and dice were even unlawful in private homes; shuffleboard was banned. Horse racing was actively discouraged.
A distinctive set of games did emerge in Massachusetts: the Boston game, now known as American football, and the New England game/the Massachusetts game/ town ball or round ball, now known as baseball. During the first 2 centuries of American history ball games were not common in the southern colonies. What is now the American national game was originally a New England folk sport.
Time Ways: The Puritan idea of “improving time.” Time-wasting in the Bay Colony was a criminal offense. As early as 1633 the General Court decreed:
“No person, householder or other, shall spend his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict; and for this end it is ordered, that the constables of every place shall use special diligence to take knowledge of offenders in this kind, especially of common coasters, unprofitable fowlers and tobacco takers, and to present the same.”
In 1634 the Court fined two men the heavy sum of 20 shillings each for “misspending their time.”
Ben Franklin wrote: “Time is money.”
This was a world firmly governed by the discipline of clocks and calendars. To the Puritans the night seemed not only dangerous but evil. The town bells sounded a curfew every night, and in some towns in Massachusetts, they are still rung. To be a broad after curfew without permission was to risk punishment for a crime called “nightwalking.”
The Puritans also had a society defined by the weekly Sabbath. They defined the Sabbath in Old Testament terms, with it beginning at sundown on Saturday. Work, play and unnecessary travel were forbidden on this day. Sexual intercourse was also taboo on the Sabbath. The Puritans believed that children were born on the same day of the week as when they had been conceived, so some unlucky infants were denied baptism because of their parents’ supposed sin.
There were 4 holidays celebrated in Puritan New England: Election Day, Commencement Day, Thanksgiving and Training Day.
Election Day was a Wednesday in April when the charter of MA required that members of the Bay Co. should meet to elect their officers. Gradually it was celebrated with sermons and a ritual meal of “election cake and “election beer”.
Commencement Day was an academic ceremony that became a mid-summer’s holiday, celebrated on a weekday in July in Cambridge with dinner, wine and a “commencement cake”
Training Days happened at various dates from early spring to late summer when the militia assembled to practice their martial arts.
Thanksgiving had become an annual event by 1676 and was held on a Thursday in November or December. This autumn ritual began with a fast, followed by a family dinner and then another fast. The main event was a sermon reminding New Englanders of their founding purposes. Sabbath rules were enforced on these days.
Order Ways: New England was always the most orderly region in British America, but it was also very violent in its ordering acts. “Order” to the Puritans meant a condition where everything was put in its proper place and held there by force if necessary – it did not mean a state of peace and serenity. Violent crime and disorder were uncommon in MA, and in the MA county courts, crimes against property were more common than crimes against persons. In MA towns, most adults were prosecuted at least once for criminal offenses against order – commonly small Sabbath violations, minor cases of disturbing the peace, idleness, domestic disorder or drunkenness.
The most terrible punishment was death by hanging, which was inflicted when a person was convicted of any of 13 capital crimes: Witchcraft, idolatry, blasphemy, homicide, rape, adultery, bestiality, sodomy, false witness with intent to take life, and for a child of 16 or older who was a “stubborn” or “rebellious” son or who “smote” or “cursed” a parent. Next to hanging, in point of violence, were punishments of maiming: the slitting of nostrils, amputation of ears, branding of face or hands.
For less serious offenses, the penalty was shipping, unless one could pay a fine. (pg. 194) Other offenses were punished by various forms of public humiliation – the stocks. Criminals were often required to wear on their clothing a letter of the law in some contrasting color as a badge of shame:
A = adultery
B = blasphemy or burglary
C = counterfeiting
D = drunkenness
F = forgery
I = incest
R = roguery
S = sedition
T = theft
Power Ways: The politics of Town Meeting. East Anglian towns governed themselves through officers called “selectmen” who were elected by the people. Town Meetings brought together the principal inhabitants of a community. New England town governments tended to become very active in the life of their communities. The inhabitants voted to tax themselves heavily by comparison with other parts of British America. The object was not to rule by majority, but by consensus.
Freedom Ways: “Ordered Liberty” In New England “liberty” often described something which belonged not to an individual but to an entire community. This idea of “publick liberty” was consistent with close restraints upon individuals in the community. When New Englanders used the word “liberties” they were referring to individuals. A person’s rank was defined by the liberties that he possessed.
The South of England to Virginia: Distressed Cavaliers and Indentured Servants, 1642-1675
In the thirty-five years of Sir William Berkeley’s tenure, beginning in 1641, Virginia was transformed. Its populations increased fivefold from 8,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. It developed a coherent social order, a functioning economic system, and a strong sense of its own special folkways. Most important, it also acquired a governing elite which Berkeley described as “men of as good families as any subjects in England.” . . . They shared his Royalist politics, his Anglican faith, and his vision for the future of the colony.
Nearly all of Virginia’s ruling families were founded by younger sons of eminent English families during Berkeley’s governorship. Berkeley himself was a younger son with no hope of inheriting an estate in England. Younger sons, by reason of their birth order, were forced to leave England. Of the 152 Virginians who held top offices in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, nearly all were connected to aristocratic families and only 18 were sons of yeomen, traders, mariners, artisans or “plebs”. None came to Virginia as laborers. The first Washington came to Virginia in 1657. He was the younger son of an Oxford-trained clergyman who had been removed from his living by the Puritans.
With very few exceptions, these immigrants were staunch Royalists – 98% had supported the king in the Civil War. If they had gone to university, they tended to choose Oxford. They were Anglican in their religion and their faith was important to them, as it was to the Puritans.
_______________________________________________
Environment: The dominant feature of Virginia’s environment was the Chesapeake Bay. Where the soil was richest and where the gentlemen liked to build their grand manor houses and estates, also became the worst place to be in the summer and fall. To colonists from northern Europe, the Chesapeake proved to be desperately unhealthy. The length of the growing season was longer than in New England, but as the temperature rose, so did the death rate. Feval pollutants washed into swamps and stagnant pools. The bay itself became an ideal breeding ground for typhoid fever and amoebic dysentery. Another part of the problem was malaria. The tidewater was a perfect nursery for mosquitos. Malarial parasites were introduced at an early date by immigrants from Europe and Africa. Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, enteritis and other disease took a terrific toll in the part of tidewater Virginia where the soil was richest, where the gentlemen liked to build their seats.
Virginia and the Mother Country: Virginians long retained a sense of longing for the land they left. They perceived the culture of England as a precious inheritance to be protected from change and passed intact from one generation to the next. This attitude was shared by colonists of all ranks. This attitude deepened into a positive hatred of foreigners.
Speechways: Virginia speech differed from Northern speech. Where a northerner said, “I am,” “You are,” “She isn’t,” “It doesn’t,” and “I haven’t,” a Virginian of even high rank would say “I be,” “You be,” “She ain’t,” “It don’t,” and “I hain’t.” The people of the Chesapeake used “like” for “as if” “He looks like he’s dead.” This would never have been heard in New England. The speech ways of Virginia’s first families were closest to educated London speech.
Vocabulary: many terms were borrowed from the Indians and later the Africans.
bide = stay
howdy = hello
craw = throat
catercornered = crooked
tarry = stay
tote = carry
chomp = chew
grit = courage
lick = beat
links = sausage
flapjack = pancake
bandanna = handkerchief
botch = blunder
favor = resemble
pekid = unwell
moonshine = distilled liquor
yonder = distant
angry = infected
booklearning = schooling
disremember = forget
skillet = frying pan
mess of greens = a serving of vegetables
jeans = a cloth of coarse twill weave (an old English corruption of Genoa, whence this fabric was imported)
Virginians tended to add vowels where New Englanders dropped them, as in haalf for half and puriddy for pretty. Consonants were softened and prolonged as in sebem for seven, chimbly for chimney, foller for follow, mistis for mistress, dis for this, dare for there.
Building Ways: the highest expression of vernacular architecture in Virginia was the “great house” a handsome, brickbuilt structure, surrounded by outbuildings, gardens and fields. In most respects Virginia’s plantation houses were exactly like the middlesized manors in south and west of England during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The preferred building material was brick. The size of bricks in England was regulated by royal proclamation and the size of bricks in 17th century Virginia were the same. Small Virginia houses were primarily built out of wood, but in a very different style from those in New England. A third level of housing consisted of oneroom shacks made of whatever materials came to hand, but they were not log cabins.
Family Ways: Virginians gave more importance to the extended family and less to the nuclear family than did New Englanders. Many of these households included servants, lodgers, and visitors. Chesapeake households also tended to include more step-relatives and wards, fewer children in the primary unit, and also more servants than in New England. This was largely because the southern colonies had higher rates of illness and death. Extended families were also buried together in Virginia, a custom that was uncommon in Massachusetts. There was also a class of impoverished gentlemen in England and America who made “visiting” their profession, and became semi-permanent fixtures in other men’s houses.
Marriage Ways: The Church of England had a 5 step process: espousal, publication of the banns, religious ceremony, marriage feast and sexual consummation. Clandestine marriages were punished by imprisonment.
The bride and groom were often united in two ceremonies: a Christian ceremony in the bride’s home or church, with a minister officiating; and a broomstick marriage. This was an ancient pagan practice in which the bride and groom were made to jump over a broomstick. For black slaves this was the only kind of marriage that was permitted.
The marriage ceremony was followed by a feast, which often included a fancy ball and a house party that went on for days. Male Virginians married at 25 or 26 (same as New England), but brides in the Chesapeake colonies were much younger; most Virginia girls found a husband by the age of 17. Because so few immigrants were females, nearly all women were able to marry, and a man’s chances of finding a wife were a function of his social rank.
Amongst landed families, marriage was regarded as a union of properties as well as persons and the destinies of entire families were at stake.
Childrearing Ways: Bending the Will. Roughly 1⁄3 of newborn babies perished within the first 20 months of life and nearly half were dead before they reached adulthood. Young Virginians were actively encouraged to exercise their wills, as opposed to the practice in New England of breaking the will of the child. All children, without exception, even orphans, apprentices and slaves, were compelled to master the formal rules of right conduct. These rules were carried directly from the southern counties of England. (pg. 314-16)
Literacy: Literacy was an instrument of wealth and power in Virginia and many were poor and powerless in that respect. Among Virginia’s gentry, literacy approached 100%, but in the 17th century most adult Virginians (white and black, male and female) were unable to sign their own names. Schools were few and far between and ignorance was widespread. This was deliberate on the part of Virginia’s elite, who positively feared learning among the general population. The libraries of the great planters were among the best in British America, but the yeomanry of Virginia owned few books, and servants nearly none. Slaves were forbidden to read at all. The penalty for a slave who tried to learn how to write was to have a finger amputated.
Dress Ways: Chesapeake elites tended to dress more opulently than did the builders of Massachusetts Bay. The costume of the elite was made of fragile fabrics, perishable colors, and some of the more impractical designs that have ever been invented. Wealth was displayed by necklaces, brooches and earrings for men. Virginia gentlemen carried great fur muffs which demonstrated their freedom from manual labor. They pierced their ears for pearls or elegant black earstrings. Servants dressed in blue it was their color, the badge of their condition of life. Black slaves dressed in the ordinary costume of country laborers African dress was forbidden. Ladies wore red cloaks and wore a white lace handkerchief over their heads and face when out in public.
Time Ways: The Cavalier Idea of “Killing the Time”. Whereas Massachusetts people attempted to find ways to “improve the time”, Virginians looked for ways to kill time and it became an expression of social rank. They played cards, gambled, did dramatic readings all leisurely activities. The Puritans preferred to “improve the time” by inventing alarm clocks and daylight savings time and by turning every passing moment to a constructive purpose.
Order Ways: In 17th century Virginia order was fundamentally a hierarchical conception. The most important order-keepers were not the town constables who had been elected by the people, as in New England, but county sheriffs who had been appointed in the name of the Crown. Sheriffs were expected to be landed gentlemen, who didn’t actually do the work of the county, but delegated the work to underlings.
Convicted felons in Virginia received very different punishments according to their rank. For all but the most serious crimes, literate criminals could please “benefit of clergy”. By reading aloud the “neck verse” form the Bible (fn 399), they escaped a hanging, and were sentenced to be branded on the brawn of the thumb. Gentlemen-felons were sometimes sentenced to be branded with a “cold iron” which left no mark that might destroy their honor. But the poor and the illiterate went to the gallows. Men received lighter sentences than women in the Chesapeake colonies, in essence to maintain hierarchy.
Freedom Ways: Dr. Samuel Johnson asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for freedom among the drivers of negroes?” In place of New England’s distinctive idea of ordered liberty, the Virginians thought of liberty as a hegemonic condition of dominion over others and – equally important – dominion over oneself. Virginia ideas of liberty conceived of freedom mainly as the power to rule, and not to be overruled by others. Its opposite was slavery. It never occurred to most Virginia gentlemen that liberty belonged to everyone. It was thought to be the special birthright of free-born Englishmen, and gave them a right to rule less fortunate people in the world. As John Randolph of Roanoke declared, “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.”
North Midlands to the Delaware: The Friends’ Migration, 1675-1725
Individual Quakers had begun to appear in the American colonies as early as the 1650s, only a few years after the Society of Friends was founded in England. The Friends’ migration began in earnest in 1675 when the first full shipload of Quakers disembarked in West Jersey. In 1682 the scale of the migration increased when 23 ships brought 2,000 emigrants who founded the colony of Pennsylvania with William Penn as the leader. Altogether, 23,000 colonists moved to the Delaware Valley between 1675 to 1715, and the majority were Quakers or Quaker sympathizers. Their numbers increased rapidly in the 18th c.; by 1750 the Quakers had become the third largest religious denomination in the British colonies.
_______________________________________________________________________
Religion: The Quaker idea of a universal “inner light” within all humanity encouraged a spirit of fraternity with other people. They addressed everyone as “friend” and welcomed others of many different backgrounds to live beside them. The only people whom the Quakers did not welcome were the emigrants form the North British Borders who arrived after 1715; these immigrants were hurried along westward.
Social Origins: The Friends’ migration was not as much of a family affair as in New England, but more so than in Virginia. Pennsylvania’s immigrants tended to be men and women of humble origin who came from the lower middling ranks of English society.
Speech Ways: The vocabulary of the North Midlands became part of the American midland speech, taking root in the Delaware Valley. The dialect in the Delaware Valley developed from the North Midlands, which was itself a linquistic hybrid which evolved from a mixture of British and Scandinavian tongues. The North Midland vowels still exist today: a as in dahnce, whereas the New Englander would say daance, and the Virginian would say dayence. None of these words were invented in America all were carried from the North Midlands to the Delaware Valley.
Apple-pie order = very good order Gab = talk
Bamboozle = deceive Good grief = expression of surprise
Black and white = writing Grub = food
Blather = empty talk Gumption = determination
Brat = child Guts = belly
By golly or by gum = an expletive Heap = for a large number
Chuck = toss Nap = short sleep
Cotton = attach (to cotton on) Slam = a put down with violence
Dresser = chest of drawers Sneezlepook = a hesitating person
Dumb-founded = astonished Spuds = potatoes
Egg on = urge on Thingamajig = article of unknown name
Elbow grease = industry Us = me (wake us up)
Flabbergasted = extremely surprised
Building Ways: Fieldstone walls, slate roofs and simple wood trim all combined in a plain style that emerged from simple Quaker values and North Midland traditions. Walls were plastered with a mixture of lime and hair, and rooms were furnished sparsely. Rugs were condemned as “vain” and “needless”.
Family Ways: Some scholars believe that the origins of the “modern American family” are to be found in the early Quaker settlements. They were “ the first scene of a major, wide-spread, obviously successful assertion of the child-centered, fond-fostering, nuclear family in early America and most likely in the Anglo-American world.” Quakers actually used the word “family” in a fundamentally different way than we do now – they spoke of the Society of Friends itself as their “family”. Quaker ideas of family were less hierarchical than those of New England Puritans or Virginia Anglicans. Though they insisted that children should obey their parents and the young should honor their elders, they all dined together at the same table, including servants and slaves. Family served as a spiritual sanctuary, but never as an end in itself, but an instrument of God’s holy purposes in the world.
Marriage Ways: Quakers brought with them a strict set of marriage customs, which specified who one might marry, how and when and where and why. A proper marriage had sixteen steps. Quakers strongly condemned “mongrel marriages” to “unbelievers”. Outmarriage caused many disciplinary proceedings by Quaker meetings. They also forbade first-cousin marriages, which were commonplace in Virginia. The formal consent of all parents was required; without it, permission to marry was refused. Because there were so many rules and they were strictly enforced, marriage came late among the Quakers. Mean age at first marriage was higher than among Anglicans – mid-to-late 20s. Many Quakers never married at all.
Gender Ways: The Quakers had a saying: “In souls there is no sex.” Men and women were equal in the spirit. Consequently, the role of women within the Society of Friends differed fundamentally from other Protestant denominations. From the start, female Friends preached equally with men and became leading missionaries and “ministers” in their faith. Acts of violence against Quaker women arose in part from their headlong challenge to an entire system of gender relations. In the 17th c. the mere appearance of a female preacher was enough to start a riot.
Child-rearing Ways: Many Quakers rejected the Calvinist idea of original sin, that children were born evil. They came to believe that small children were “harmless, righteous and innocent creatures.” Quakers made heavy use of rewards rather than punishments and promises rather than threats. Quaker children were trained from a very early age to think in terms of serving the community. The period of life from 14-21 was called “the slippery and dangerous time of life.” Quaker parents were more strict with their children during these years, condemning the custom of “sending out,” which was widely practiced by the Puritans.
Learning Ways: There was a general ambivalence toward the act of reading, with the Quakers relying on the idea of reason as a “natural candle” for learning. The egalitarian idea of liberty of conscience weakened the formal institutions of literacy. Many schoolhouses were hexagonal in shape. The children were seated in circles rather than rows – less hierarchical and more communal expression of different attitudes towards learning, authority and children. The Quakers had no requirement for a learned minister and had little respect for higher learning.
Food Ways: Food and drink were not to be consumed for pleasure but only for subsistence. Common things were best, and moderation was to be cultivated in their consumption. Quakers refused to touch foods that were tainted by social evil, such as sugar, because it was grown with slave labor. Others banned salt from their tables because it bore taxes, which paid for military campaigns. They preferred boiling their food. Their morning and evening repasts were generally made up of milk, having bread boiled therein, or else thickened with pop-robbins – things made up of flour and eggs into a batter and dropped in the boiling milk. They also introduced from England a special form of food preservation which came to be characteristic of the Delaware Valley. This was a method of dehydration by boiling, simmering or standing. The classic example is the foodstuff that became famous throughout America as Philadelphia Cream Cheese – nothing more than partially dehydrated sour cream. They also dried beef, which when properly prepared would keep for several years.
Dress Ways: The common fabric of the Quakers’ clothing was a plain homespun called “Hodden gray.” Male Friends were forbidden to wear “cross Pockets” on their coats and “needless” pockets of any sort. Men were encouraged to wear plain, broadbrimmed beaver hats. Only men who had no hair at all were allowed to wear wigs. They were warned against broad hems, deep cuffs, false shoulders, superfluous buttons, fashionable creases, wide skirts and cocked hats. Fashionable hairstyles and fancy hats were condemned for women of all ages, who were encouraged to wear plain bonnets. Quaker women were expected to wear aprons in public of either green or blue color, not white, nor any silk aprons. The use of dyes was discouraged, particularly indigo, because it was produced by slave labor. Bright dyes were condemned as excessively proud and dark dyes were forbidden because they were thought to hide the dirt.
Business Ways: Quakers tended to help one another. They loaned money at lower rates of interest to believers than to non-believers and sometimes charged no interest at all. Quakers developed systems of insurance against commercial risks and played a major role in the development of the insurance industry. The oldest business corporation still existing in America is the Philadelphia Contributorship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire – founded in 1752 by Quakers. The great banking houses of England were those of Quakers, including Barclay’s and Lloyd’s
Time Ways: The Quaker Idea of “Redeeming the Time.” In place of the Puritan idea of “improving the time” and the Anglican idea of “killing the time”, the Quakers thought in terms of “redeeming the time.” Quakers abolished the ancient calendar of the Christian West and adopted a new system which was carefully purged of every vestige of what they regarded as pagan corruption. In Quaker calendars, January became merely “First Month”, and the week began not with an Anglican Sunday or a Puritan Sabbath, but a Quaker “First Day”. Even Christmas was excised from the Quaker calendar, as it had been by the Puritans.
Order Ways: The Quaker Idea of Order as Peace. The English Friends didn’t start out as a people of peaceable disposition. However, after Friends founder George Fox was imprisoned by the Puritans for refusing to fight at the battle of Worcester in 1651, the testimony of peace became an important part of Quaker teachings. Leading Quaker William Penn defined order as a system which “enjoins men to be just, honest, virtuous; to do no wrong, to kill, rob deceive, prejudice none; but to do as one would be done unto” – the Golden Rule. Officers of the law in the Delaware Valley were responsible for maintaining “good order,” by which was meant a condition of social peace in which each individual was forbidden to intrude upon the quiet of another person. This was a revolutionary idea at the time – a conception of order in which everyone did not have to believe the same creed (Puritans) or to fit into a single hierarchy (Chesapeake Cavaliers).
Freedom Ways: Within the first decade of settlement in the Delaware Valley, a powerful antislavery movement began to develop. As early as 1688, the Quakers of Germantown issued a testimony against slavery on the ground that it violated the Golden Rule. In 1712 the Pennsylvania legislature took action, passing a prohibitive duty on the importation of slaves; this measure was disallowed by the English Crown, which had a heavy stake in the slave trade. Though many Quakers recognized that slavery was a boon to the economy, they insisted that it was morally corrupt and at war with the deepest values of Christianity. Quakers argued that if they did not wish to be slaves themselves, they had no right to enslave others.
Borderland to the Backcountry: The Flight from North Britain, 1717-1775 Notes
From 1718 to 1775, the annual number of immigrants from Ireland, Scotland and the north of England averaged more than 5,000 per year. At least 150,000 came from northern Ireland; at least 75,000 departed from the west of Scotland; more than 50,000 left from the coastal towns of northern England. It was mainly a migration of families. The age distribution of men and women was remarkably broad, but 25% were children under the age of 15. All age cohorts were well represented except the elderly.
Migration Motives: The reasons for leaving home were strongly materialistic, not religious. They had high rents, low wages, heavy taxes and short leases. Conditions were so hard in some places that famine and starvation were often mentioned as reasons for leaving. They had dreams of a better life in the New World. However, the transatlantic journey became more dangerous in the 18th c. than it had been in the 17th c. Mortality in ships sailing from North Britain approached that of the slave trade.
Social Origins: These immigrants faced intense prejudice from other ethnic groups upon arrival in the New World. They were referred to as “the scum of two nations,” and “the scum of the universe.” There was, however, a small percentage (1-2%) who were gentry and came from the ruling order of this region. A larger group were independent yeomen, but most emigrants came from the ranks below that of the gentry and statement. The majority were farmers and farm laborers who owned no land of their own, but worked as tenants and under-tenants. Some were semi-skilled craftsmen and petty traders. Overall, they were more humble than the emigrants in the other waves from England, but they were not from the bottom of British society. Desperately poor people were excluded from this migration due to the cost of the trip itself.
They were a “mixed people.” Mixed in their social rank, mixed in their religious denominations, and most profoundly mixed in their ancestry – Celtic, Roman, German, English, Scandinavian, Irish, Scottish. But they were all “Border People.”
Religious Ways: Those who came from Scotland and the north of Ireland tended to be Presbyterian, with a scattering of Roman Catholics. The English border folk were mostly Anglican, with a small sprinkling of other Protestant sects. They believed in “free grace,” and before emigrating they had formed the habit of gathering in “field meetings” and “prayer societies,” a custom they carried to America and established in the backcountry. The people of these regions were hostile to the “hireling clergy” that the Church of England settled upon them. Some converted to more evangelical forms of Christianity and some from Scotland created a militant sect called the Cameronians, after the founder Richard Cameron. This group often forcibly removed these clergymen, sometimes using much violence. In the Backcountry, this resulted in their own variant of the Golden Rule – do unto others as they threatened to do unto you.
American Backcountry: The Borderers entered America principally through the ports of Philadelphia and Newcastle. They moved quickly into the surrounding countryside, squatting wherever they found a vacant spot of land. The Quakers, who were not happy with this group of settlers, decided to encourage the borderers to settle in the “back parts” of the colony. The idea was that these people might become a useful buffer between the Quaker population and the Indians. Many of the new settlers drifted south and west along the mountains of Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. The largest concentration of the immigrants was found in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the western parts of Maryland and Virginia, No and So Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Environment: the southern backcountry was a vast area roughly the size of Western Europe, extending 80 miles south from Pennsylvania to Georgia and several hundred miles west to the banks of the Mississippi. The climate was very moist and the land was laced with mountain springs that never ran dry. This abundance of water allowed small family farms to flourish and encouraged a sense of stubborn autonomy among the farming folk who settled there. Before the Borderers arrived, the backcountry was occupied by the Shawnee, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. Come of the fiercest Indian wars occurred in these parts as a result. The Borderers were more at home in this environment than other immigrants, so they came to dominate these regions. They were well-suited to their family systems, their warrior ethic, their farming and herding economy and their attitudes towards land and wealth and ideas of work and power.
Place Names: Royalist names were not common. In No. Carolina there are over 130 place names beginning with Mc or Mac. Their food ways appeared in place names such as Frying Pan, Corncake, Whiskey Springs, Hangover Creek. The violence of the culture appeared in place names such as Bloody Rock, Cutthroat Gap, Gallows Branch, Hanging Rock, Skull Camp Mountain and Scream Ridge.
Speech Ways: A distinctive family of regional dialects can still be heard throughout the Appalachian and Ozark Mountains, lower Mississippi Valley, Texas, and the Southern Plains. It was recognized as “Scotch-Irish speech.” It was an earthy dialect. The taboos of Puritan English had little impact on Southern highland speech until the 20th c. Sexual processes and natural functions were freely used in figurative expression.
Small children = little shits (term of endearment): “Ain’t you a cute little shit.”
Whar = where Chaw = chew
Thar = there Poosh = push
Hit = it Shet = shut
He-it – hit Widder = widow
Far = fire Winder = window
Deef = deaf Be-it = bat
Pizen = poison Wrassle = wrestle
Chaney = china Nekkid = naked
Eetch = itch Boosh = bush
The grammar also differed from other English dialects:
He come in; she done finished; they growed up; you wasn’t there, was you? He done did it; he don’t have none.
Building Ways: The log cabin was first introduced by Scandinavians and popularized by Scots-Irish settlers in the 18th c. The word “cabin” was a border noun that meant any sort of crude enclosure, commonly built of the cheapest material that came to hand: turf and mud in Ireland, stone and dirt in Scotland, logs and clay in America. The first Borderer cabins yielded to log cabins that were better suited to the climate and resources of the New World. The interior design was similar to what these people had had back home. Rectangular walls enclosed a single room in which and entire family lived together. The floors were usually hard-packed dirt. The walls had a few simple openings for windows, and doors were placed on both the front and back walls for quick exits. Some of the structures had a firepit and a hole in the roof, others had a rough open fireplace on the gable end. Cabins were a standard size: 16 x 17 feet long. Larger welling sin the backcountry ended to be several small cabins built close together, rather than buildings of a different type. Cabin architecture was a style well-suited to a people who had a strong sense of family and a weak sense of individual privacy. They slept altogether in common in one room, and dressed openly without ceremony.
Family Ways: The structure of the family tended to be a set of concentric rings which encompassed all kin within the span of four generations. These people were clannish in the most fundamental sense: a group of related families who lived near one another, were conscious of a common identity, carried the same surname, claimed descent from common ancestors and banded together when danger threatened. Distinctive features of this clan organization was the emphasis on collateral rather than lineal descent. In the theory of clan relationships, all branches of the family – younger as well as older, female as well as male – were deemed to be of equal importance. “When a Scottish man or woman took a spouse who was not of Scottish descent, the whole family could be absorbed into the ‘Scottish community.” But when the bride had belonged to a rival clan, then the question of loyalty became more difficult. Generally a new bride left her own kin and joined those of her husband. Marriage ties were weaker than blood ties. In many cases, husband and wife both came from the same clan. The clan was not an alternative to the nuclear family, but offered strong support. Nuclear households were among the largest in British American during the 18th c.
The backcountry ideal for living arrangements was a scattered settlement pattern in isolated farmsteads, loosely groups in sprawling “neighborhoods” that covered many miles. “No man ought to live so near another as to hear his neighbor’s dog bark.” Backsettlers built their houses near creeks or springs. Family, friends and neighbors visited one another over long distances, staying in each other’s houses, sleeping in the same beds, eating from the same dish. There was always a welcome for kin and friends, but an intense suspicion of strangers.
Marriage Ways: An ancient practice on the British Borders was the abduction of brides. The old custom had been elaborately regulated through many centuries by ancient folk laws which required payment of “body price” and “honor price.” Two types of abduction were recognized: voluntary abduction, in which the bride went willingly but without her family’s consent, and involuntary abduction, in which she was taken by force. Strict Protestantism of Scottish and Ulster Presbyterians created a heavy overlay of moral restraint when this practice was brought to the American backcountry, but many backcountry marriages included mock abduction rituals that kept the old customs alive in a vestigial way. Age of marriage in the backcountry was different from every other American region. Both brides and grooms were very young: average ages of women were 19 and men were 21. Nowhere else were the ages of males and females so nearly the same. The “wedding toast” originated with the group as well. In addition, rates of pre-nuptial pregnancy were higher than in any other part of the American colonies.
Gender Ways: The men were warriors and the women were workers. Women and men routinely shared the heaviest manual labor. Both sexes worked in the fields all year, and women tended the livestock including slaughtering even the largest animals. Women also helped with the heavy labor of forest-clearing and ground-breaking. In other respects, the backcountry families were decidedly male-dominant. The male was expected to be the head of the household and the consort was required to do his bidding quietly, cheerfully and without complaint. Whenever a culture exists for many generations in conditions of chronic insecurity, it develops an ethic that exalts war above work, force above reason, and men above women. In the backcountry, this culture was reinforced by the hostile environment, but tempered by evangelical Christianity.
Child Ways: The rearing of male children in the backcountry was meant to be positively will-enhancing. Its primary purpose was to foster fierce pride, stubborn independence and a warrior’s courage in the young. An unintended effect was to create a society of autonomous individuals who were unable to endure external control and incapable of restraining their rage against anyone who stood in their way. The daughters of he backcountry were expected to learn the domestic virtues of industry, obedience, patience, sacrifice and devotion to others. Male children were taught to be self-asserting; female children were taught to be self-denying. Corporal punishment was condemned in the abstract, but much practiced in an intermittent way. Terrible beatings were given to children by frustrated parents who found themselves incapable of controlling their children or restraining their own parental rage. The problem of promiscuous violence in child rearing was compounded by alcohol.
Magic Ways: The Borderers had an obsession with sorcery and the folklore of the southern mountains was full of witches and goblins for many generations. The magic of the backcountry was s simple set of homespun superstitions designed for use by small groups of unlettered people. It was very secular in nature, mainly seeking to control worldly events by the manipulation of worldly things.
Beliefs:
If a warm current of air is felt, witches are passing.
The twitching of an eye is a sign that one is bewitched.
If there are tangles in your hair early in the morning, the witches have been riding you.
If your shoestring comes untied, the witches are after you.
If a butterfly comes into the house, it means a stranger is coming to visit.
If you carry a lock of hair of a person, you will have power over that person
Cures:
Wet a rag in your enemy’s blood. Put it behind a rock in the chimney. When it rots, your enemy will die.
To point an index finger (dog finger) of the right hand at a person will give that person bad luck.
If you want to keep witches away, lay a straw broom in the doorway.
For scurvy, apply uncooked potatoes sliced and soaked in vinegar.
A cure for homesickness is to sew a good charge of gunpowder on the inside of the shirt near the neck.
To cure a fever, climb a tall tree with your hands (do not use your feet) and jump off.
For good luck, boil a black cat alive.
For fever, cut a black chicken open while alive, and bind to the bottom of a foot. This will draw out the fever.
Eating the brain of a screech owl is the only dependable remedy for a headache.
For rheumatism, apply split frogs to the feet.
To reduce a swollen leg, split a live cat and apply while still warm.
The blood of a bat will cure baldness.
To cure sore eyes, kiss a red head.
To take away freckles, wash your face in cobweb dew.
To stop a wound from bleeding, pour kerosene on it.
Good Luck:
It is good luck to put a garment on wrong side out and leave it that way all day.
It is bad luck to say “thank you.”
It is bad luck to bathe on your wedding day.
If two people wash their hands in the same water, they will be friends forever.
Three drops of your own blood, fed to another, is an effective love charm.
Learning Ways: Rates of literacy varied according to place and wealth and rank. Many men without property were unable to write, but large wealthy owners could sign their names to wills and deeds. German Protestant and French Huguenot settlers were the most literate: more than 90% could write their names. Scottish highlanders were the least literate: 50% could only sign by making their mark. The backcountry was an oral culture in which writing was less important than the spoken word. The culture put a high value on memory, experience, testimony and truth-telling, which was defined by not bearing false witness. Average levels of schooling were very low – the lowest in British America. They remained lower than in any other part of the U.S. from the early 19th c. to the late 20th c.
Dress Ways: Border Origins of Country Western Dress. A Backcountry woman wore a dress with a bull bodice with deep decolletage, tight-fitted waist, short full skirt and a hem worn high above the ankle. It was scandalously revealing by the customs of any other group. Backcountry women of all ages normally wore homespun linsey-woolsey garments. Male backsettlers commonly wore hunting shirts. This was a kind of a loose frock, reaching halfway down over the thighs, with large sleeves open before, and so wide as to lap over a foot or more when belted. This upper garment was cut full in the chest and shoulders, with broad seams that ran horizontally across the front and back and was drawn or “cinched” tightly at the waist. The effect was to enlarge the shoulders and chest. The men of the backcountry also wore loose, flowing trousers or breeches or “drawers”. The lower legs were sometimes sheathed in gaiters called “leather stockings”. The dress ways of both male and female were designed to magnify sexual differences.
Children in the backcountry also dressed differently from youngsters in other parts of British America. They were allowed great freedom in articles of clothing. “No shoes or stockings” – one observer wrote – “children run half-naked – the Indians are better clothed and lodged.” Later generations remembered this backcountry dress as aboriginally American – the pioneer dress of the frontier. But it was not worn on most frontiers, and was not invented in America. It was similar in dress ways described by travelers in the north of England, the lowlands of Scotland and northern Ireland. Leather shirts and stockings were not frontier inventions.
Sport Ways: The Southern Highland Games. “Scots and English” was a favorite game on both sides of the border in Britain. Two teams of boys faced each other with their hats and coats in piles behind them. The object was to make a raid across the line, and to plunder the other team of its possessions without being captured. The boys shouted the ancient war cries of their region. More than other parts of England, the sports of the border were contests of courage, strength and violence.
Special importance was given to wrestling – an ancient sport on the borders, commonly pronounced “wrasslin” or “russlin”. (pg. 736) “Rough and tumble” was a savage combat between two or more males (occasionally females), which sometimes left the contestants permanently blinded or maimed. (pg. 737) Bloodsports have existed in many cultures, but this was one of the few that made an entertainment of blinding, maiming and castration.
The borderers and Scots brought their “Caledonian Games” to America, where they became the ancestor to track and field events in the U.S. These meets commonly included shot-put, hammer-throw, running broad jumps and high jumps, pole-leaping, hop-step-and-jump, hurdles, a “long race” of one mile, a walking match, sack races, wheelbarrow aces, three-legged races, highland dancing, and tossing the caber. All of this activity occurred with a ring of 500 feet in circumference.
Another example of an ancient and primitive game carried from the border to the backcountry is “shinny”. This ancestor of hockey had originally been played with the long bones of a sheep. In the west of England is was called “not”; in London it was called “hockey”.
Time Ways: The backsettlers organized their lives by events in the Christian calendar, but not in the same way as other cultures of British America. They preserved ancient Christian rituals long after they had been abandoned by other people. “In some parts of the country it is custom to observe what is known as “Old Christmas” on January 6th. This is the day believed by people who keep it to be the real Christmas, the birthday of Christ. They say the Christmas we regularly keep is the ‘man-made’ Christmas.” It is celebrated with roaring bonfires and gunplay. Easter Monday was a day of wild revelry, with much cockfighting.
Folk rituals, which centered on the family and neighborhood, made the transition from old to new world and became an established part of backcountry culture. Their culture assigned many fixed seasons for doing things. For example:
Never mix April 30th milk with that of May 1st or the butter will be slow in coming.
Make soap on the full of the moon or else it won’t set.
Sprinkle ashes on animals and fowl on Ash Wednesday.
Proverbs:
Never trouble trouble, ‘til trouble troubles you. Do not argue with the wind.
Of all the inhabitants of British America, the back settlers were the most conservative and the least instrumental in their time ways. By and large the people of the backcountry tended to believe the rhythms of life were beyond the capacity of mere mortals to change in any fundamental way. They had a fatalistic idea of passing the time. The more these people moved through space, the more rooted they became in time.
Work Ways: “Where the warrior ethic is strong, the work ethic grows weak.” The backsettlers appeared lazy to outsiders, primarily because they worked in different patterns from other immigrants.
In their new American environment, the backsettlers adopted an old North British system of agriculture called the “infield-out-field” farming. Crop farming remained very primitive in Appalachia. The system of herding had also been practiced in the North British borderland and was transferred to the backcountry, but a few important changes were necessary. Sheep, which had been the main support of British animal husbandry, became an easy prey for predators in the wilderness. They were replaced by swine, which were allowed to breed freely on the range, rapidly reverting to the wild species from which they had descended. This process of devolution produced the backcountry razorback, which was more like a wild boar than a barnyard pig. It became so wild that it was hunted with a rifle.
Many remained poor and landless for generations. Inequality was greater in the backcountry and the southern highland than in any other rural region in the U.S. Just a few families owned very large tracts of land. In 1983 the top 1% of owners possessed half the land in Appalachia. The top 5% owned nearly two-thirds. This pattern of wealth distribution in the southern highlands in the 20th c. was much like that which had existed 200 years earlier.
Order Ways: Extreme inequalities of material condition were joined to an intense concern for equality of esteem. In the backcountry, rich and poor men dealt with one another more or less as social equals. They wore similar clothing and addressed each other by first names. The worked, ate, laughed, played and fought one another on a footing of equality.
Proverbs:
The rain don’t know broadcloth from jeans.
Poor folks have poor ways, and rich fold damned mean ones.
Any fool can make money.
He who is at the bottom can fall no lower.
Despite this equality of manners, a clear-cut system of social status existed in both the borderlands and the backcountry which differed from ranking customs in other parts of British America. At the top was the “ascendancy” – Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John C. Calhoun, James Polk, Patrick Henry, Sam Houston, the Grahams, Bells and Bankheads – people and families who were descended from those who were highly placed in North British society. They owned a large part of the best lands and held most of the top military and political offices. But they were not distinguished by learning, breeding, intellect or refinement. The result was a highly materialistic system of social rank. Wealth alone became more important as a determinant of status than in New England, Pennsylvania or Virginia.
Below the ascendancy was a small middle class. Most were small farmers who owned their own land. Below this was a large rural proletariat who owned no land and few personal possessions. Most were either tenants or squatters. Their property ran on four legs – consisting mostly of cattle and swine which they raised in the woods. The Hatfield-McCoy feud, in which more than 20 people were killed, started as an argument over 2 hogs. This backcountry underclass has been given many names, all of which derived from North Britain:
Hoosier = a rough or uncouth person
Redneck = originally applied to backsettlers because of their religion – Presbyterianism. It was a slang term for religious dissenters in the North of England.
Cracker = a low and vulgar braggart
The backsettlers had little tolerance for those who broke their own rules. They dealt harshly with social deviance by a ritual called “hating out”. Hating-out could take many forms. Sometimes it was the “silent treatment” or a form of ritual abuse called “tongue-lashing”, or petty harassment, or whipping or banishment outright.
Backsettlers shared an idea of order as a system of retributive justice. The prevailing principle was lex talionis, the rule of retaliation. It held that a good man must seek to do right in the world, but when wrong was done to him, he must punish the wrongdoer himself by an act of retribution that restored order and justice in the world. This idea of order rested upon an exceptionally strong sense of self-sovereignty. A No. Carolina proverb declared that “every man should be sheriff on his own hearth,” an almost exact copy of a saying from the borderlands of North Britain. There were official sheriffs and constables, but the heaviest work or order-keeping was done by ad hoc groups of self-appointed agents who called themselves “regulators in the 18th c., “vigilantes” in the 19th c. and “nightriders” in the 20th c.
The custom of the blood feud was introduced to the backcountry by the borderland immigrants. Back country courts tended to punish property crimes with the utmost severity, but to be very lenient with crimes of personal violence:
For hog stealing = death by hanging
For scolding = five shilling fine
For the rape of an 11-year old girl = one shilling fine
Proverbs of the backcountry justified the use of violence only when it promised to succeed:
Better a coward than a corpse.
He that fights and runs away will live to fight another day.
Power Ways: There was comparatively little formal structure to local government – no town meetings, no vestries, no commission, and courts of uncertain authority. It was a highly distinctive type of polity which has been called “macocracy” – “rule by the race of “Macs”. It features a strong personal leadership by men of influence. For example, Andrew Jackson never championed the cause of the people, he merely invited the people to champion him. This was a style of politics which placed a heavy premium upon personal loyalty. Disloyalty was the primary political sin.
Freedom Ways: The Idea of Natural Liberty. “They shun everything which appears to demand of them law and order, and anything that preaches constraint. They hate the name of a justice, and yet they are not transgressors. Their object is merely wild. Altogether, natural freedom is what pleases them.” A leading advocate of natural liberty was Patrick Henry, who consistently defended the principles of minimal government, light taxes, and the right of armed resistance to authority in all cases which infringed liberty. But the idea of natural liberty was not a reciprocal idea. It did not recognize the right of dissenters. “Every man at nature’s table has a right to elbow room” – an idea straight from the North British borderlands.